The day after this, Gracie had an errand, up in a little town beyond the hills. Arthur asked that he might go there with her; then they both might ride instead of driving. So they started, after luncheon; the new brown leaves lay crisp beneath their feet, and the light that flooded the valley was like yellow wine. Their way lay up over the hills to the eastward, and then, cresting their summits, along a rambling grass-grown road, between the crumbling stone walls and old unpainted farmhouses. What paint the farmers had to spare, they put upon the barns; a poor powdery stuff, weak in oil, and leaving but a brushing as of red earth upon the seasoned boards; the windows of the farmhouses looked out forlornly upon the fields already lonely, grim and unrelieved by any curtain. The places where gardens had been used to be, were common for the hens; along the fences for a hundred yards on either side of every house was a littering of chips where the wood-piles had been, but the piles were scant this year, and of half-grown birch; the reason was easy to see, for the great hills rolled off around them denuded of timber, save here and there a new growth of scrub oak. Beside each house the old well stood, its sweep pointing to the sky, but now disused and replaced by a patent log-pump, painted a garish blue. Arthur rode very close to Gracie to-day; there was an exhilarating space and sweep to the free wind that brought bright color to their cheeks, and their clear eyes sparkled as their glances soared far over the brown downs and rested with delight upon the distant sky-line. There is something about our New England uplands like the barren worn-out plains of Old Castile; yet these two might have stood for a youth and future that one cannot hope from Spain. They came out from the table-land down into a combe that had been worn for itself by a little stream now dry; as they ambled down the winding grass-grown way, the trees began again about them, oak and pines, then firs; a house or two was passed, and then a little school-house, the houses boarded up, and the school-house closed. They came down upon the turnpike, which had come by the longer way, around the hills; here was a bit of a village, a blacksmith’s house, a country store and an old hotel. The weather-worn wood of these seemed older than any thatched and plastered cottage in old England.